From the moment Kamau stepped into the shaman’s cave, carrying Anawe, who burned with fever and lay unconscious in his arms, he felt uneasy. His worry about his sick sister was a part of it. In the firelight’s glow, sweat glistened on her face and chest, rivulets dripped onto the wool blanket spread beneath her on the hard-packed dirt floor. Welts marked her fevered skin as if she’d been lashed with a whip. The other part, Kamau decided, was the shaman’s perfunctory attitude. He acted as if he’d been expecting them.“Put her there,” he commanded Kamau, pointing to the blanket by the shallow pit where fire burned with unnaturally white flames.“I am Tausele,” the shaman said. Long scars carved a thin line from beneath each black eye to the corner of his wide mouth, as if his face had been scored with the tip of a knife. A snakeskin loincloth wrapped about his hips, shining slickly in the firelight. Black lacing around his left arm rippled. In the flickering firelight, what appeared to be leather strips were two serpents entwined from the shaman’s wrist to his elbow.“Well met,” said Kamau. “I am Kamau of the Edanye as are you, I see.” The shaman’s bare chest was scarred with the tiger-claw totem of the Edanye tribe. Kamau bore such a scar as well. “My sister Anawe. Ill for two days now.”Tausele gave Kamau a measuring gaze. The Edanye warrior met the other man’s stare. He fished a hide pouch from a pocket in his cloak. Opening the pouch, he jiggled a few pearls into his palm. “For you. What can you do for her?” He tilted the pearls back into the pouch, pulled its drawstring tight, and handed it to the shaman.“What the gods allow, I shall do,” said Tausele.Squatting, he inspected Anawe the way he might look over a slave in the market. Kamau watched anxiously as the shaman touched her forehead, then her chest. Spreading his long fingers, he pressed upon her, grunted, as if satisfied, and went to shuffle about in the shadows. Kamau unbent himself from crouching by Anawe’s side, rising tall. The fire captured his shadow and pasted it against the walls.“Abadde,” he said, addressing the shaman formally. “She is too close to the fire.” He knelt and slid his arms around Anawe, gently gathered her. He need only move her so that the pale flames were not too hot on her fever-wracked body.“Leave her be!” Tausele shook a feathered stick at Kamau. “The fire draws the elili from her.”Kamau lowered Anawe to the blanket. He wiped her face with his fingers, smoothing moisture from her skin, hoping the elili, the evil spirit making her ill, would be forced out of her by the fire’s magical power.Tausele came out of the shadowed corner carrying something in his hands that glowed in a color Kamau had never seen before.“Ja’a o jua le’le!” Holding his hands over the fire, the shaman’s voice rose and fell rhythmically with the intonation of sorcerous syllables. The flames leapt, drew the glow from Tausele’s hands and subsided, burning green with the strange color trembling in its midst.“What is that?” Kamau pointed.“Her soul,” said Tausele, flames flickering in his eyes.Kamau’s heart dropped and a feeling like the rush of spiders prickled his skin. Shocked at the shaman’s betrayal, he jerked his dagger from its scabbard. Before the shaman could say another word or perform another trickery, the Edanye warrior grasped a fistful of the shaman's braided hair and jerked back his head, baring his throat to the dagger’s keen edge.“Give it back to her,” he said. “Now!”Tausele, his head awkwardly canted in Kamau’s grip, gazed at him without fear. “The bones foretold one such as you would come.” Kamau caught the whiff of bitter marro-seed on his breath. “Do as I tell you, she lives. Disobey me,” he lifted his hands, palms open. “She dies.”He should have sought a Karan healer as Anawe had asked him to do, but he’d heard Karan healers were even stranger than those of a tribal shaman. He’d feared what a bendau, outlander, healer might do to her. He’d thought he could trust an Edanye shaman.Feeling like a fool, Kamau bridled his anger, released Tausele, and sheathed his dagger. He glared at the shaman, his hands fisted. How gratifying it would be to break a few of his bones. But Anawe’s soul burned at the heart of the fire.“What do you want?”Tausele rubbed the spot on his throat where the edge of Kamau’s blade had rested, giving the warrior a narrow-eyed stare.“Fetch me the dzomba,” he said. “What men call the ghost stone. Her life for stone.”“Lying fenga!” said Kamau. “Hurt her and I shall kill you.”Tausele gave him a grim mocking smile. From a brace of hooks on the wall he took a long spear and tossed it. Kamau caught it with the quickness of a striking snake.“The spearhead is salt,” said Tausele. “Only it can kill the demon that guards the dzomba.”“Why do you not go yourself, shaman?”“An abaje marks my soul,” he said. “Were I to cross, I would not be able to return.” He pointed to Anawe. “Fail me, she dies, her soul becomes mine.”Kamau stumbled drunkenly, his belly roiled, his senses lost in the sorcerous wind. He found himself at the threshold of a doorway, an arched opening engraved with glyphs that wriggled like worms. Gray radiance shadowed the air. He shivered, his leopard-skin cloak robbed of its warmth in the penetrating cold. Against his chest he felt the icy touch of the charm on its leather cord. The shaman had used it to send him into Odaalei, the vale of damnation.Hefting the spear, Kamau stepped into an unfathomable darkness. He was grateful to feel ground beneath his feet. A whisper of wind swirled around him. His ears strained for a sound beyond his thumping heart and the rush of his breath. He could be standing on nothing more than a finger of ground, about to step into the yawning throat of a chasm.A glow stole through the dark, dissolving it to smoke, mist, light. Crouching, ready to fling the spear at whatever came, Kamau looked left and right, expecting to see the demon the shaman had spoken of. He heard the shimmering tintinnabulation of bells.Before his eyes the air whirled, a gathering of mist. From it spun a girl, dancing; black as obsidian, her braided hair swinging at her waist, bangles and bells around her ankles and wrists sang silver.“Welcome!” She bowed to him, speaking in a voice as bright as the song of her bells. “Welcome to my abode, mortal.”Kamau regarded her, glanced beyond her, his gaze sliding along the chamber’s vaporous walls.“You be not the demon,” he said.“ I am Njen." She pranced a few steps and shook her tambourine. “You have come for the dzomba.”Another lie from Tausele. He’d come prepared to fight a monster, and was faced with a dancing girl.“How do you know that?”“You are not the first.”“Where lies the demon?”“There be no demon here,” she replied. “Only I.”“Then you must be the demon,” he said.She laughed. “Then it must be so.” She raised her tambourine and shook it rhythmically. “Demon am I, demon am I,” she sang, dancing around the chamber, bells ringing with mockery. “The dzomba is easily found if you answer my riddle.” She lifted the tambourine, tapped it rhythmically against her palm, gazing at him. “Will you answer my riddle, mortal?”“Speak it.”“Shrouded in the living, caged in bone, through blood is the dzomba found. Answer truly and you will know its name,” she said.“What manner of evil be this stone?”“The dzomba gives power over the living and allows great command of the dead. Brings them back clothed in flesh as they were when alive. None can tell the difference.”She clapped her hands. An hourglass appeared, floating in the air, filled not with sand, but with water. As he watched, a single drop dangled and fell, followed by another. Kamau thought of Anawe, beaded with sweat, swaddled in fevered sleep from which she might never awaken, if he failed. Yet it was unlikely the dog of a shaman would set them free once the dzomba was his.“You must answer before the last drop falls. If you fail, you will be taken.”“Taken?”“Your soul into Odaalei,” she said. She twirled away from him, and vanished, bells fretting the air.The mists closed about Kamau, obscuring everything but the patch of ground he stood on and the water-filled hourglass. Curses sprouted and flared in Kamau’s thoughts. He could only return from this place once he had the dzomba in his hand. He avoided looking at the hourglass. He strode forward, his gaze fixed on the ground with each step. Njen’s riddle floated in his thoughts. He considered it but the words were as meaningless as the wind. Yet meaning hid within them, like scent on air. Once he found the dzomba and was back in the world, he’d wring blood from Tausele, he swore. Kamau paused, stared into the roiling mists. After a moment, he looked down and away. Unwholesome images trembled at the edge of his consciousness. If he stared too long at them, he’d start laughing or yelling or moaning. Neither was a welcome.“Shrouded in the living, caged in bone,” he muttered. He glanced up in irritation and caught sight of the hourglass. Liquid glossed its bottom. “Through blood is the dzomba found,” he said, trying to see meaning in the words.Carefully he turned around, and retraced his steps. Stopped. It made no difference where in this place he was. Njen had not denied his accusation, he recalled. She’d mocked him. He recalled then the other thing Tausele had told him.In a chamber swathed in mist Njen sat still as stone, one hand on her knee that rested on the floor and her other arm up, elbow resting on her raised knee. Her eyes were closed, her bells and bangles silenced. She remembered. Her life had not been long as such time was counted. She’d been a court dancer, trained in the sensual arts practically from birth. She’d been as entrancing as the black lilibar-flower and as poisonous as its heartbud. The son of the prince had truly loved her. So much the fool was he. His weakness had made it easy for her to lure him to the ruined temple, to push him into the nest of vipers in an abandoned well. The Consort had promised her freedom and wealth if she rid her of the crown heir.But she, whose heart knew neither loyalty nor honor, had been betrayed. Bound hands and feet in a sack of wool, she was thrown from the wall of the palace into the sea. She’d awakened in Odaalei, eternity her prison, condemned to spend endless time, guardian of the dzomba. She wished for the peace of death, but no mortal, those shamans and other seekers who disturbed Odaalei with their greedy efforts, had ever answered the riddle correctly. In her endless span of empty time, moments of seeping regret for her evil deeds assaulted her. Ancient words, an echoing cry in her darkness, roused her from her bitter memories.“Call the demon,” Tausele had said. “Command thrice that it come.”Kamau set the spear on his shoulder and shouted into the mists, “O’le’le ngahe!” The alien syllables tore from his throat and a knife danced in his mouth. He tasted blood and metal on his tongue. He spat. Twice more he had to call.“O’le’le ngahe!” His throat burned as the syllables fell into the mists. Nausea coiled in his stomach. He leaned on the spear and cursed the shaman. Drawing breath he shouted the razor-edged command a final time. “O’le’le ngahe!” Kamau spat a gobbet of blood, the last syllable twisting out of him. He fell to his knees, heaving dryly, gripping the spear tightly. Bells sang around him. Getting to his feet, he steadied himself, and raised the spear.Njen swayed out of the mists. “What is your answer?” She pointed at the hourglass. “Odaalei waits.”Kamau saw that the bottom half was nearly full.“Shrouded in the living, caged in bone,” he said. “You are indeed the demon. The dzomba is your heart.”He glanced at the hourglass and saw with relief that no more drops fell. He looked at Njen, expecting her to transform into a gruesome thing. But she did not.“You have saved yourself from Odaalei.” She gently shook her bells.Kamau held the raised spear, felt the weight of it in his hand. Reluctance stayed his arm. Compelled by rough circumstance, he’d sliced the life out of men, but to strike down this dancing girl, who appeared to be no more than sixteen summers old, no older than his youngest cousin. Yet she was a damned soul and if he had failed to answer the riddle, no doubt she would have torn his heart from his chest.“My sister dies if I return without the stone.” He raised the spear again. “You have answered the riddle truly,” she said, gazing at him without fear.But still Kamau hesitated, caught by her calm wait for true death. She sat down, cross-legged, in a jingling rain of bells, and patted the open ground in front of her, regarding him solemnly. “Sit, O Mighty One with the Spear,” she said.Kamau sat and laid the spear across his thighs.“Tell me of the one who sent you here.”He told her about his sister’s illness, about his seeking the shaman Tausele’s help to heal her, about the shaman’s betrayal.“That one!” said Njen, her laughter high and ringing. “The mists whisper of that one. He is marked, did you say?” At Kamau’s nod, she said, “Long has his soul been forfeit.” The bells at her wrists jangled. “If you would have the dzomba, you must kill me. Then you shall know its true name.”Kamau stood, leveled the spear at her. On the field of battle, he’d killed; in defense of his life, he’d killed, in defense of someone else’s life, he’d killed. Here he faced a creature of darkness and could not find it in himself to send her into eternal death. His hesitation mingled with his disgust at having to do the wicked shaman’s bidding.“I long to pass to my next life, should the gods will it, or rest forever.” Njen rose to her knees, a breath away from the sharp tip of the salt crystal. “I would throw myself upon the spear, but I cannot. Were I to do so, I would become a wraith in a far worse place than this. Spare me that, warrior. Free me from this damnation.” She spread her arms, her bells jangled. “Please.”“If you would have it so,” he said, still hesitating. Then added, “You will be free of Odaalei. No longer damned.”“Everything I have ever known has long been dust,” she replied.Kamau thrust his spear into her chest, stepping back as green flames sprang over her. She spoke the name of the dzomba as she burned, her body swirling into ash. Where she’d knelt lay a glistening black stone. Kamau closed his fist about it.As before, great prickly wings of wind wrapped about him, tore his senses from him, casting him into a black void like that of dreamless sleep. He dropped stumbling into the world he knew, back in the fire-bright cave. He gripped the dzomba tight in his fist, its weighty cold freezing his hand. If the shaman thought Kamau would simply hand it over, he’d soon know better.“Oai’ ga’hla‘ai’ le’le!” shouted Tausele.Kamau’s limbs became as stone. One of the serpents freed itself from Tausele's arm and streaked toward him, piercing his chest, its tiny head hard as an arrow. His heart thumped sluggishly, the serpent coiling about it, trailing ice. Anawe lay as he’d left her, locked in the fever’s death-like grip, her soul caged in Tausele’s green fire. Kamau strained against the binding chant, but his effort was futile.Tausele’s hands inscribed the air with shimmering glyphs. More sorcerous words slithered out of his throat. Kamau felt the dzomba gripped in his fist burn with an icy heat. His thought of holding it back to win Anawe’s freedom was no more than dust now. Though his body was frozen in Tausele’s spell, his hand opened like a flower. Tausele snatched the falling stone.“Soon all the world will know my name, all will come to know Tausele, Death’s Master.” The shaman smacked his lips. “Even Death will fear me.” He went to the fire, holding the dzomba on his palm. “The fire will reveal its name to me, thus its power will be mine.”He dropped the dzomba into the flames, knelt and leaned closed, his face limned by firelight. He frowned, drew back, leaned once more toward the fire, peering at the black stone in the flames. He spoke a word, reached and snatched it out. He studied it, turning it over and over in his hand, and lifted his gaze to Kamau.“Is this not the dzomba?” He got to his feet. With a sharp gesture at Kamau, he said, “Speak!”Kamau felt his throat soften, the meaning of Njen’s final words coming clear to him. Without hesitation, he intoned the true name of the dzomba in the way Njen had spoken it. Blood welled in his mouth. He spat it out, not minding this time.Light, black-rimmed and as keen-edged as a sword, lanced from the dzomba, slicing the air with serpentine lines. A rushing wind whirled through the shaman’s cave, the cold gray mists of Odaalei wrapped about Tausele like pythons. He cried out, his terrified shout dying on the edge of the vanishing void. The cold petrifying Kamau melted from him and his limbs lost their heaviness. He felt something leathery crowding the back of his throat and heaved, hawking out Tausele's serpent, dead. Disgust and repulsion shivered through him. The glaucous flames burning near Anawe flickered out, and the white glow at their heart disappeared.“No!” Kamau searched the ground for the black dzomba. It too was gone, and…he could not remember its name.He knelt by Anawe, who lay as if dead. He cursed Tausele, hoping the shaman fell into Odaalei’s deepest, darkest, most demon-infested abyss. Grasping Anawe by her shoulders, he shook her as gently as he could, willing her eyes to open.“Wake, Anawe. Wake!”But she did not awaken. Kamau sat back on his heels, not believing, grief rising in his heart. The light of dawn touched the moss-mottled walls of the shaman’s cave, and he heard the strident bird-calls of bharies, winging in the day. The glazed blue bead of Anawe’s necklace, nestled in the hollow of her throat, trembled, and she opened her eyes. She pushed up on her elbows, her gaze flitted around the shaman’s cave and arrowed suspiciously back to him.“Next time I shall do as you say,” he promised.Kamau grinned, and inhaled deeply the pure green scent of the morning’s first breath.

“I expect you fellows will want to have a look at this!”Deon slammed the book down on the table, hoping to attract the attention of his friends with a satisfying thump, but in the merry bustle of the tavern the sound was rather feebler than he had hoped. The book’s cover read: Giselder Farnbrak’s Herbs and Homely Cooking.Ruald glanced down at the book, then back up at Deon, the drooping lids of his eyes suggesting nothing but boredom. “You’ve taken up cooking,” he said blandly. Tenny and Guimer chuckled.“I can see why you might think so,” Deon said, failing to repress a grin, “but as of yet I have not taken up cooking—I think I’ll leave that to Tenny, since he’s been at it for ten years already. No—actually, it’s a fake cover.” He opened the little book up and pointed at the inside edges of the cover, which had been shoddily stitched together. He flashed each of his friends a glance under his wave of fair brown hair, a smirk still on his lips. He was certain he had them curious now.“I see,” Tenny said, scratching at his wispy beard. “So what is it then?”“I’m glad you asked, Ten. A wise question. What it actually is”—here Deon leaned in close and lowered his voice, as if someone in the crowded tavern might hear anything he was saying—“is a book of spells.”Tenny half-chuckled, a broad grin creeping across his pudgy red cheeks. He waited for Deon to confess he was joking and tell him what he really meant. Deon held his gaze expectantly. That was what he really meant.“A book of spells,” Ruald intoned, “this is very serious. We can’t have you messing around with spells, Deon—you’ve only had one ale and you’re already slurring your words.”“Well, let us have a look at it then,” Guimer said, his rough voice rising above the din. He snatched the book from the table and opened it; it looked preposterous in his huge hands. “Where’d you find this eh?”“Someone left it in one of the rooms at the Fairview—was lucky I found it before my brother got his hands on it.”Guimer brought the little book right up to his face, so close it was touching his great red beard, and he said in a booming voice: “Devil come forth into this world! Into this very tav—”“No, no, don’t read it!” Tenny shouted, frantically waving his hands. Guimer looked up from the book and laughed.“I was making it up! I can barely even read the damn handwriting, you fool!” he said, showing Tenny a page of black scrawls. “Besides, you don’t really believe this nonsense, do you?”“Well, not really,” Tenny said, smiling sheepishly. “But just in case . . .”“Give it back here,” Deon said, “my eyes are still young, I can read it. I’ll only read a little so we don’t end up turning into boars, or something else horrible. You must hear some of this stuff—it’s all very strange.”He opened the book and started leafing through, his features screwed up in concentration. With his fair hair and thin, pointed features he looked like a squirrel intent on opening a nut.“Here--Bestow Misfortune, apparently. Seems rather tame really, when you think about setting people alight, or turning them to ice, or whatnot, the sort of things you hear from people who travel too much—anyway, so it says: Devil bestow misfortune upon thee, that your life may be long, yet bitter and sorrowful, and full of pain, and so on. Rather odd, isn’t it?”Deon looked up and met Ruald’s gaze. The man’s face was blank—it was merely his cold blue eyes and upturned mouth that made him appear filled with distaste for everything around him. “And so on?” he said, “Finish it. Don’t say this stuff scares you. We already have one frightened pup at the table.” He motioned lazily at Tenny without looking at him.Deon smiled and raised his eyebrows, the equivalent of a shrug, and said: “Just in case.” He took a swig from his tankard to avoid Ruald’s eyes.“To hell with that,” Ruald said, “find something tame if you must, and read that. Then when we see that nothing happens we can read the rest, and laugh at you two for being so pathetic.”“Alright, alright, alright. I’ll find something,” Deon said. “Gods you can be grumpy sometimes. I’d hate to see what you’re like when you don’t have an ale in front of you.” He leafed furiously through the book, muttering to everyone and no one.It was an early Friday evening at the tail-end of summer, and The Viscount was filled with bodies. Still more were piling in through door just behind Deon, and as they passed him on their way to the bar they glanced down at the table. They had heard nothing, they merely knew from Deon’s lively mutterings and the intense interest the others seemed to be paying him that he was up to something strange.“Summon gold—that sounds like a good idea. I’ll be almost out after another ale. Here we go--Devil summon gold coins within your purse, as lustrous as any in the land. Diyaban talan s’baa. Diyaban talan s’baa. Diyaban talan s’baa.”Deon had spoken the words as solemnly as he could—he had always pictured wizards as old grey men intoning their spells with an air of melancholy—and despite themselves Tenny and Guimer glanced around, as if gold was about to fall from the ceilings of the tavern. Nothing happened. Ruald snorted contemptuously. “Check your purses!” Deon hissed, fumbling in his overcoat.“Nope. Nothing,” Tenny said.“Same here,” said Guimer.Deon sighed, looked down at the table and shook his head. “Shame. I almost believed it would work for a moment.”“How old are you, Deon?” said Ruald, his voice tired. He picked up the book from the table and began leafing through it, looking mildly amused.“I’m thirty years the month next,” Deon said, “and don’t try and mock me for it, I know you’d give your left arm to be thirty again. You’re on your way to becoming a grumpy old man, Ruald—there, I’ve said it.”Ruald couldn’t help but smile, as was often the case when he listened to Deon’s rambling. He passed the book back to the young man, open. “Try this one—I’ll buy you an ale if you read it, which I’m sure you won’t, you coward.”“Well, that’s hardly fair. If you’re so brave and mighty, you read one, and we’ll see what happens.”Ruald held Deon’s gaze for a moment, a sardonic smile crossing his face. “Alright then,” he said, and took the book back again. He flipped through the pages for a moment, looking no more excited than if he had actually been reading Giselder Farnbrak’s Herbs and Homely Cooking. The eyes around the table watched him silently. Tenny gulped his beer. Finally, Ruald began:“Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart—”“Don’t!” Tenny shrieked.Guimer and Deon fell about laughing. Ruald shot a tired look at Tenny, whose face had blushed red.“Come on, you coward, let the man finish,” Guimer said. “Let’s see some spells flying about the tavern, eh? It hasn’t had much excitement in a long time, has it?”“I don’t like it,” Tenny said, shaking his head, “what does it say this—spell—even does?”“Nothing,” Ruald said. “It says nothing, and it does nothing, because it’s nonsense.”A scruffy looking man standing behind Ruald leaned over the table, looking at Tenny. “I didn’t think anyone still believed those old wives’ tales,” he said, a thin smile spreading across his face. “I agree with this gentleman here”—he motioned at Guimer—“let’s scare some of the locals.”“Well, there’s believing and there’s taking precautions,” Deon said. “I don’t believe in it, but what if I’m wrong? What if we’re about blast the tavern back to the stone age? I’ve never seen any magic, but I’ve never set eyes on the source of the Winterwind—or the sea for that matter—yet I’m sure they exist.”The scruffy man held Deon’s gaze for a moment, his face severe. His skin was the color of leather, cracked and broken with age and covered with thick black stubble. A great mane of greasy black hair hung down his shoulders. “And I’m sure you’ve never seen a woman in the flesh, naked in a bedchamber neither,” he said, “but I assure you, they do exist.”Guimer and Tenny roared with laughter, and even Ruald manager a slight chuckle. “He’s got you there lad!” Guimer shouted. Deon held up his hands and smiled, but his face turned pink.“I have, actually, despite nature’s gifts in many areas, seen—that which you just mentioned. Regardless, it seems rather beside the point. If anything it supports my argument.”The scruffy man glanced down at Ruald. “Come on then—read the damn thing in full. Nice and loud. Or shall I do it?”“That’s alright,” Ruald said bluntly, and started reading again: “Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa. Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa. Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa.” The men held their breath. People standing around them peered down at the group, frowns crossing their faces. Glances were shared between friends. The volume of conversations dropped, the sound of the strange words Ruald had spoken troubling people’s minds. The colorful cheeriness of the tavern seemed to have darkened slightly, as when the face of a foreigner appeared at the door. Deon, Ruald, Guimer and Tenny looked around. Nothing happened.“Well, I guess I’m a coward,” Deon said, “but it does pay to be one on occasions, so let’s not dwell on it. I’ll try another one.” He snatched the book from Ruald and started reading once more:“Diyaban bamapan godaa d’bansaa karan ekato bibat jantu talan. Diyaban—”“I would much rather you didn’t,” said a voice.The voice had come from a man standing behind Deon. The eyes of the table looked him over: he was a gentleman, and he wore a fine grey coat with ruffled white plumes at the end of the arms. His skin and hair were almost exactly the same shade of grey, which was only a shade lighter than the grey of his coat. He looked as prim and cold as a corpse dressed for a funeral, and his eyes rested on the men at the table with unhidden disdain.“And why’s that?” Guimer growled. “Don’t tell me you believe in this stuff. I don’t, and I don’t care if you do.”“Whether I believe in it or not isn’t relevant,” the gentleman said, his voice imperious, “what matters is that you are using a vulgar language—the tongue of the barbarians from the south—which I happen to understand some of, and it is most unpleasant to have to listen to. I would rather you refrain from speaking in such a manner—after all, as you say, nothing will happen, so you might as well talk amongst yourselves properly.”A quiet as close to silence as was possible had fallen over the tavern. Deon felt as if every eye in the room was turned in his direction, the sockets of the animal heads on the walls included. Guimer’s face flushed a deeper red than his hair, and his lips quivered. Suddenly he leapt to his feet.“I’ll be damned!” he roared, “I’ll be damned! This is our tavern! We’ve been coming here, sitting on this table for going on fifteen years, you pompous bastard! And you come in and tell us what to say, what to do, acting like the lord of a damned manor! Your manor’s that way, matey! You don’t like hearing us—clear out!”A number of cheers went up around the tavern. The gentleman’s face had remained as calm as a lake throughout Guimer’s outburst, his great forehead and crooked nose giving him a look of noble severity. He seemed completely oblivious to how out of place he was amongst the merry red faces of the tavern. For some reason Deon felt suddenly afraid.“There is but one table available,” the gentleman began, his voice icy, “it is next to yours. That is where I wish to sit and drink my ale. I hoped not for a confrontation, but if you continue speaking in this vulgar language I shall speak with the barman, whom I trust is more respectable than the likes of you.”“Read the damn spell,” the scruffy man growled.He was staring darkly at the gentleman. The gentleman turned to him and held his gaze, and it looked to the men at the table like a demon facing a ghost: one man dark and wild, his black eyes shining, the other cold, white and reserved. For a moment there was silence—then Guimer leant forward, snatched the book from Deon and slammed it down before him.“Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa!” he yelled, his face pressed down to the book’s pages, “Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa! Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa!”The gentleman sighed in disgust, turned sharply and strode over to the bar. Deon watched as he spoke with the barman, who looked him up and down, glanced over at his regulars around the table, and laughed.“They pay me well, they can do what the hell they like!” he shouted, laughing. All the while Guimer continued chanting, his voice rising louder and louder:“Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa! Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa!”The table rocked with laughter. The dark haired man behind Ruald was smiling broadly, and he turned to Guimer and shouted: “louder! Louder!”The gentleman grimaced, buttoned his coat vigorously, shot a dark look at the scruffy man, a darker one at Guimer, and then turned to go. Deon felt a slight pang of guilt, but he was enjoying himself too much to care. As the gentleman turned to the door Guimer’s shouting reached its peak, becoming a roar of exultant victory and a last insult towards his adversary. Every face in the tavern was turned towards the commotion, and most were laughing and smiling at the sight of the gentleman’s back.“Debilan d’bansaa karan jan’kaa ekato abart talan bisaa—”An ear-rending scream split the sounds of the tavern, silencing the mouths and chilling the hearts of everyone in the room. It was not the voice of one man, or even one entity: it was a chorus of horror, pure, breathless, never-ending. It was like the wind’s whispering had risen to a deafening shriek, and there wasn’t a mind in the tavern conscious of anything but a fear as pure and black as onyx. In the same instant a darkness such as could not be found in the deepest cavern descended, as quickly as the snuffing of a candle. Deon could make out nothing. It was not a mere absence of light: it was as if something physical had eclipsed his sight, erased his memory, emptied his mind, and left nothing but the terrifying screaming.A point of light formed in the darkness. It began to grow, the colors twisting and changing from a searing yellow to a sickly purple. It pulled at the men in the tavern, drawing their sight and their bodies steadily towards it. They did not try and fight it, as they had all but ceased to exist: they had been reduced to nothing but the unholy screaming in their ears, the impossible blackness, and now the light that swirled before them, blinding and terrifying. The light continued to grow, until it had filled everyone’s minds.Then they heard underneath the screaming a low, sonorous voice chanting. It was in the same language as the spell, yet somehow its meaning rang clear and true in their minds.“Alor bisaa sen hayan,” they heard, and they knew that their world was ending.“Apan ashaa yantan ekaa bisaa asak,” they heard, and they knew that all that awaited them was pain.“Anantaa jan’kaa an taa bedanaa,” they heard, and they knew that it was to be eternal.Suddenly a clear, booming voice rang out, and it sounded as if it was from another world—the world they had almost lost.“Debilan tamat apanaa samabet!” The voice shouted, loud and defiant. “Debilan tamat apanaa samabet! Debilan tamat apanaa samabet!”The screaming and chattering was twisted off and sucked away into the light. The light itself swirled inwards, shrinking, like blood running down a drain. Slowly the blackness resided, and dull light crept back into the tavern with all the caution of a panicked animal. The room stood aghast and silent. The candles had been snuffed out. The food and drink on the tables had been cast about at random. People found themselves lying on the floor, or across tables, or clutching the walls with their fingernails. The only man standing was the scruffy man with the greasy black hair. He held the book of spells in his hand and a sinister smile across his lips.He turned and glanced down at Deon, his eyes twinkling. “I’ve been looking for this for a while,” he said, flashing a mischievous grin. Deon, sprawled on his back with his toppled chair still between his legs, couldn’t make a sound. The man stepped over him, then over the gentleman, and the eyes of the room watched him with silent horror. He opened the door and walked out into the evening air, the book safely back in his pocket.

Editor

Curtis Ellett is a frustrated fantasy writer and a founding member of the 196 Southshore Writers' Group. He has lived on three continents, studied archaeology and worked as a newspaper ad designer and a bookseller. He now gets paid to write. Find him on Twitter @CurtisEllett.